It may be just in preseason games, but the Chicago Bears are showing signs of life. And if they are to truly turn things around on the field in the 2022 NFL season, one weapon they hope will truly break out and be a smash hit in both real life and fantasy football — outside of quarterback Justin Fields, of course — is tight end Cole Kmet.
Kmet was among the sexy sleeper picks to break out in his second year in the NFL 2021, but that did not turn out to be the case for a variety of reasons. Cole Kme recorded 612 receiving yards and zero touchdowns on 60 catches and 93 targets in his second year in the NFL.
Among the reason was that the Bears' offense looked out of synch on an almost weekly basis during Matt Nagy's last season as the team's head coach. The Bears' anemic 2021 offense averaged just 18.3 points per game and 307.4 total yards per contest, just 27th and 24th in the entire NFL, respectively. They were frustrating to watch in the rare times they reach the red zone. In those situations, they were only able to score a touchdown 47.9 percent of the time, third-worst in the league.
But with Nagy gone in Windy City along with his system that never worked with the Bears and with Matt Eberflus seemingly breathing life into the franchise's attack, Cole Kmet's stock is now seriously on the rise, especially after what he showed in a limited time on the field in Week 2 of the 2022 NFL preseason against the Seattle Seahawks Thursday night.
Cole Kmet on seven plays tonight:
• 3 targets on 4 routes
• 2 rec, 31 yards (22 YAC)
• 3.7 avg. target separation#CHIvsSEA | #DaBears— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) August 19, 2022
After watching the Bears take down the Seahawks in the aforementioned preseason game, Patrick Finley of the Chicago Sun-Times sounded very optimistic about Kmet's chances to explode in 2022.
“Entering his third season, Kmet might finally live up to the hype by catching play-action passes alone. Mooney was Fields’ favorite receiver last year, but Kmet made it close at the end of the year. In two of the final three games that Fields started and finished, Kmet was the Bears’ leading receiver in terms of both catches and yards.”
In the 2021 NFL season, Cole Kmet was just right behind Darnell Mooney in target share leadership in the Bears' offense. Mooney was no. 1 with a 23.46 percent target share, while Kmet had an 18.86 percent share. The Bears also did not have any shiny offseason acquisitions to their receiving corps that would directly threaten Kmet's place on the Bears' offense. Allen Robinson is no longer with the Bears, leaving nearly 13 percent of his 2021 targets to be distributed among those who remain in Chicago.
Ryan Griffin and James O'Shaughnessy have been added to the tight end room but neither presents a real threat to Kmet's status as the no. 1 guy in the position down in Chicago. Even better for Kmet's chances is the fact that he'll no longer be competing with Jimmy Graham for looks in the red zone. Kmet led the Bears in that area with 13, while Graham was third with nine, converting four of those into touchdowns.
The stage appears to be set for a Cole Kmet breakout season with the Chicago Bears, who will be looking to get excellent production from the tight end out of Notre Dame, beginning in Week 1 of the 2022 NFL regular season at home against the San Francisco 49ers.
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